Ouroboric Anarchodada:Responsible Friends Split my Affinities

1

The mobious strip is one key to interpret the ouroborus, a flip-flop conferring an idea that, not only does the "serpent" eat its own tail, it can be seen to birth itself – more than a closed negative feedback system, it represents autopoiesis. Space is not just curved; sometimes it is twisted.

I always say, the accumulation of knowledge is the construction of necessarily & increasingly complex justifications of beliefs and whose integration (system) passes for "truth", and whose only pragmatic program pertains to the manipulation and control of others – those mirrors positioned to reflect ourselves. Likewise, the so-called "universal search for identity" is a mere ruse to keep us uninspired or offended by the alterity of our surroundings.

This is the poetic translation of that business in the bible on the tree of knowledge and the tree of life. If you want functionalism or teleology (the how and why of things), whole bodies are built for metabolism and navigation "in order" to find aesthetically interesting others for some mutual multiplication & recombination. At least that is what they seem to do most when left to their own devices.

It is the going forth with an eye for surprise which is the important point in transcending any static equation. The inquisitive pondering pause is not antithetical to movement. It is the examination of possibility or appreciation of history, extending the bandwith of your present and therefore, personal density, according to Thomas Pynchon. Not anti-intellectual, it is the literal provision of entertainment while we digest, like any good story around the campfire after a feast of fish. The future is securely hypothesised while we attend to our metabolism.

There is a reason original sin is said to have occurred in 4004 bc. It pertained to the construction of city walls necessitating complexifying bureaucracy to regulate metabolism. Where navigation is restricted, property must be king over actual experience. We've been misled (bewitched) to think the garden was a paradise. It was a cage, a fenced in place, as much a graveyard as an orchard. If apples only fall once a year, why spend the rest of your life there unless the other scenery is equally nutritious and the youngsters can come and go? Lacking in navigational skills, salvation (or deregimentation) requires a poem, a pair of dice and quick feet or long strides (boats are also handy). It's that simple! Chance happenings are the only memorable ones unless we restrict ourselves to repetitive drills. In any other context, a patriarchal drill, a man-drill is a baboon with a red and blue ass, but otherwise, uninteresting.

2

Responsibility (as and when it is also known as "duty" rather than one's variable or provisional response to another) is the fulfillment of some other's desire, regardless of your own opinion on the matter. To carry responsibility through (as your own doing or intention) demonstrates interest in duty for its own sake and therefore a fetish, or at least an empty motion as far as the other is concerned. If it is uncomfortable, it is a sacrifice, perhaps in anticipation of future reward or "delayed gratification". In the extreme it is simply masochism, which cancels alterity altogether.

Regarding "acquaintances", responsibility is blindly (habitually or unconsciously) following the dictates of custom such that any considerate interest in the reality or phenomenology of the other (alterity or concern, empathy or com-passion) is lost to a mere political correctness or superficiality (sacrifice is also the maintenance of a 'sacred face'). Duty (also justice) is an emergent or over-generalisation of the exchange paradigm, otherwise known as tit-for-tat ontology. From here, everything appears as a banal economic transaction. It's earliest etymology refers to an obligation, the expected payment of tribute. (An attribute is never paid, that which is your own "inalienable" property such as your flesh or gait. That is to say, it is fed and nurtured, it is iterated, it is yourself. A squat is a temporary attribute useful for dumping – in German, a cottage (see 'kot'). There is often a reason for polysemy, but it is usually buried in the past or acrossed the room).

Etymology can remove the so-called Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis from determinist space. It becomes an hypothesis of possibility. Repetition is not nearly enough. Should one not only think about the words one hears but also attend to their distributivity, one can change direction.

To discount etymology as a matter of the dead belonging buried is to ignore social and historical influence, not just your ancestors. To set the clock on fast mode, to compress time into a shorter duration, it would follow that what I said yesterday has no bearing on todays subject, and since time and space are said to be inseparable, what I say here is unrelated to what I say over there, however it sounds. But it also betrays an inner hunch that constraints do not really constrain, that there is such a "thing" as the unique possibility. This situational provisionality is the beginning of the road to Jainist epistemology and not chaotic uncertainty. Of course there is connection, it is just not set in stone (it's more like flowing water). The dead never stay completely buried. It is the beginning (or rebirth) of poetry. If we recall, autopoiesis implies that we are both creator/producer and created/product, organism and environment, cause and effect. This is no paradox outside of euclidean space fenced in by aristotelean authority. Organisms simultaneously influence and are influenced. They cannot be extracted from an environment (matrix, context, essence) without deadly implications, which is to say "they stop moving".

Thus, it is not a paradox but a twist of fate that one's ability to respond is con-fuseable with duty. Now it is our duty not to respond at all, but to call on the appropriate delegated authority, lest we be accused of irresponsibility. Obviously or not, it is regimented order which returns chaos, contradiction or absurdity. Some call this entropy. If I am con-fusing apples and oranges, why do we call them both "fruit"? Is value not just a matter of taste?

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe."

– John Muir, 1869

3

In the exchange paradigm, justice is a balance between sacrifice and theft, if not the blood between a scab and a divit. My dad was no scab: he sweat blood to get where he's at, R.I.P.

Capitalist relations occur as well where value is attributed to either side (the dialectical quantification of existence – take a number please), but with one flank tipping heavy like the fat twelve year-old playing teeter totter with a spry toddler, and with one calculation or another, appears extractive or exploitive, repressive or explosive. There can be no capitalist justice except in a dystopian nightmare: the fat cat wins every time until the toddler sabotages the game by coaxing the bully to scoot forward on the plank. This may require large accomplices with social instincts hiding in the bush. Had they played, instead, "Scoot your ass down an imaginary inclined plane", there would be no telling the victor and therefore, no need for leverage, as gravity does not favour the heavy or light in establishing the rate of falling bodies, and cares not a whit in the amassing of heavy profits.

Duty is a literal violation which creates "wealth" for its extractor. Another way to label this relation is "a power game" but often euphamised as "pragmatic" or "competitive". These are not social relations except where society is viewed as a simple mechanical assemblage and where simple refers to a collection of interchangeable parts and complexity refers to the number of hierarchic "levels" or turnpikes and off-ramps along which theft travels. Competition can occur only where the state of the condition is nasty, brutish and short, while mutual aid is always a possibility. There is nothing mutual in the notion of duty. But for the hypocrisy it exposes, it's not even interesting! A gift can only follow interest, otherwise it is a payment or a premium for protection.

Outside the confines of power, folks do a thing because of personal aesthetics (it is or appears to be fun, tasty, etc.), desire, encouragement or ritualisation (habit). Sometimes it is just an experiment, for no discernable reason at all. All the ouroborus may have wanted was a piece of tail, and grabbed what was handy. An "inner" compulsion (i.e., suppressed desire or intent) displayed is considered by superiors a psychological disorder, either OCD or paranoid schizophrenia at one extreme or narcissism at the other. Outside the confines of power, it is just an option for a different game or sabotage of existing game rules – a turning point out of a rut. The imp of the perverse only ever offers advice. How often it is confused with demonic possession.

I do a thing with my friends because it feels right, because "I want to", mostly because it is incomplete without the sharing. I might do a thing with the fuzz or bosses because it feels necessary, not because I love them. In fact, I do not. In fact, I have no regard whatsoever for them beyond a potential threat to my attributes and affinities (like the fictionally androgynous "womankind"). In the presence of the avant (fuzz, bosses and aspirants), my behaviour is always egoistic, motivated by self-defense. Well, sometimes to inspire mutiny, but that is generally folly. Amongst my friends, there is no ego, no duty, no responsibility. It is play (also folly – see 'frolic'). It is often called love (I say "spondee"), always accompanied with much libation. This anethical behaviour predates enlightenment discourse by about a bazilion years. In morse code, a proper spondee is da da, or two long strides by metric feet.

Ethics grow out of consideration and consistency of past spontaneities, the iteration of pleasurable adventures. Otherwise, they are merely game rules, barely distinguishable from any establishment morality or law, and typically relate to property and its divvying. Ethical order means a place for everything and everything in its place – no surprises. Some think a pound of flesh is worth three transgressions. On the other hand, when friends latch on to pot, they have a potlatch. No calculation is necessary. Children and animal friends offer a gauge to your own ethical civility: when they begin to mimic it, it is always felt disgusting:

They may bite.

4

The way to recognise religion, a certain mechanical assemblage of law, morality and ethics, is found in its intolerance for extenuating circumstance, and since all movement is from one stand or another, even when walking in circles, it is against extension itself. As this also implies duration and mimicry, we should pay religion no never mind in any circumstance.

Considering Heresy, 'to split' is an infinitive, as is 'to work'. But to split work, now that is an apple one can bite into. Schizmogenesis is merely nature's autoheresis, just as orgasmic poesis is life's autopoiesis. Beware of cheap inquisitions.

In any non-euclidean extension, any split infinitive is a possible – however improbable – pose, such as a spontaneous spondee hopping along on one metric foot (not the other) and not in line. Its iteration is the only response available. Or not, as symmetry is never as essential as squares let on. A party is three quaint acquaintances containing each three finite infinities without constraints. Less than three is just recreational sex. Like the universal opposition, there are no oxymorons, unless one is a gaggle of moronic oxen. Beware of castrating scissors, or pliers in Wyoming.

What then can we say of anarchodada? To each her own interest and to others their own taste, not discounting the occasional advice or pleasant surprise just demanding your attendance, or at least attention. They may develop a taste for you as well. If these others are your own offspring, would you expect them to acquire an obligation to assist you when you are too old or feeble to move at will, or do you think they might actually want to, despite any calculation of necessity or remuneration? But really, what's blood got to do with it? On the other hand, if we are to love our authorities, who could be left to call friend? As I've noted elsewhere, 'from each according to ability to each according to need' is just an advertisment for rape.

5

"We only trade with our enemies."

– a quaint old saying

If quaint means "attractively old-fashioned or pleasantly strange" then an acquaintance is the coming toward or nearly becoming attractively strange or pleasantly old-fashioned. Either way, it is a matter of aesthetic attraction. As professor Morrison once said,

"People are strange when you're a stranger
Faces look ugly when you're alone
Women seem wicked when you're unwanted
Streets are uneven when you're down
When you're strange
Faces come out of the rain
When you're strange
No one remembers your name
When you're strange
When you're strange
When you're strange"

Intimate and enduring obligations? That is a moral dictate, which is to say, a constraint around a contradiction. How can intimacy fuse with obligation, whether friendship is a spontaneous collision or acquired inheritance? I can only draw meaning in this juxtaposition from the perspective of prostitution, but even here, business is rarely confused in the job description with pleasure. There is no necessity that they coincide. From the client's perspective, a purchased simulation feels better than standing alone in the rain.

But everything, whether spontaneous or not, must begin with a pose. From there it either grows on you or it doesn't, and you split. Where there is a pose, here follows repose. When you get right down to it, and contrary to popular dictionaries, responsibility is only the intended iteration of chance spontaneities. If a planned experimental event, so much the better, but when petition, position and pledge come together, we have ethics – it can be nothing else:

[< ethos: "the fundamental and distinctive character of a group, social context, or period of time, typically expressed in attitudes, habits, and beliefs"]

Friendship is neither thing nor attribute. It occurs like "running". It emerges from shared moments. If any moments are of interest, we likely attempt to extend them. This is the first law of behaviour modification as well as aesthetics. We're talking encouragement! Personally, I think friend is a verb (remember the old term, "befriend"?) or a quality of an enduring action or process: "we had a friendly visit". As a noun, it is either a mere nominalisation for the sake of syntax taken at face-value (reified) or (more likely, 'then') it is a set of expectations, the very ideal which underlies classism: an "our kind of people" or "the wrong sort" sort of thing. That, to a certain extent, negates intimacy, and to fill the void produced by a lack of trust or experimental engagement, transactional or political behaviour becomes encouraged, producing yet another set of expectations. Occasionally handy, lark and necessity need not always coincide. For everything else, there is shit talk.